An interview with Dayne Richards, SEO Analyst, and Denis Pinsky, SEO Director, at Forbes.
Search-engine optimization is the offensive-line marketing play: unheralded, but full of subtle maneuvering and crucial to success. Here are six SEO pointers for content marketers for the new year, courtesy of Forbes’ experts.
1. Tattoo “MOBILE FIRST” on your body.
“Given that over 50 percent of searches are now happening on mobile,” Richards said, “content marketers should structure their stories for mobile first and foremost.”
Think about page design, Richards said. “How does the page look on a phone? Is the font easily readable? Can users control the zoom if buttons are hard to access?”
Also, make sharing on mobile easy. “Use social icons instead of text, since images are more effective at capturing the eye. That will come in handy when their content is so good that the reader has no choice but to share,” Richards said.
2. Make sure all of your content is available on mobile.
Google is about to move to a mobile-first index that takes into account, and makes visible in search results, only mobile versions of websites.
“If marketers want to maintain their reach, they should make sure all their content exists on the mobile versions of their sites,” Pinsky said. “Websites with separate URLs for desktop and mobile experiences will need to make sure that all their desktop content maps one-to-one to their mobile URLs.”
3. Page speed will become more important than ever.
“No one wants to wait for a phone to load,” Pinsky said, “and that will play a role in SEO.” Page speed, of course, is a key SEO ranking factor.
“Marketers can reduce photo size by up to 40—and sometimes even 90—percent,” Richards said. “That’s a quick win in the battle against slow loads.”
Marketers can also switch to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs), Google’s mobile page-speed solution. “Because they lack things like excessive JavaScript, AMP pages load seemingly instantly,” Richards said. “By going AMP, marketers stand to leverage Google’s AMP-specific features in their search results. And it’s the only way to be featured in a top stories carousel.”
Getting AMP’d takes work on the development side, Richards says, but it’s worth it.
4. Get ready for voice search dominance.
While traditional searches consist of two- to five-word phrases, Richards said, voice searches tend to be in full sentences. That implies a different method of structuring content.
Richards advises that marketers “include in their title or subhead the verbally-expressed question that they want to answer, to increase the chances that Google will feature that answer.” For example, if you have a page that answers the question, “Will the bitcoin bubble burst”? make sure that question is right in your page title—verbatim.
“Marketers should use voice search themselves as much as possible,” Richards added. “That will give them a feel for how queries are structured in it, and let them better create content that can satisfy those queries.”
5. Remember how your demo actually talks.
“What words do they use? Optimize for that language, that sound, and those words. People looking for information about Sean Combs will more often than not search for ‘P. Diddy.’”
And imitate success. “Study the sites that Google points you to and you’ll learn how to structure your content the way Google likes it.”
6. Get close to your social team.
“Google is all about making sure users get the most relevant content possible,” Pinsky said. “To gauge relevance, Google may start looking at how content is discussed in social. Marketers should reach out to influencers and share their content on social media.” So make friends with your social team. You’ll need them as the new year develops.
Follow these pointers and you’re on your way to SEO excellence in the coming year.
